


What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

by FaygoMayhem



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Language, Heavy Drinking, Lack of Communication, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Non-Explicit Sex, One Night Stands, Unreliable Narrator, boys who are bad at feelings, lots of disney mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-16 14:02:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18095729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaygoMayhem/pseuds/FaygoMayhem
Summary: What do you do when you get very drunk and wake up naked the next morning in your best friend's bed? Why, pretend it never happened, of course. Nothing bad can come of that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Back on my bullshit. I have far too many Kingdom Hearts feelings after the third game came out, so I just had to sit down and write something that doesn't have anything to do with any of them. I should probably give a content warning that this story revolves around a perfectly legal pair of boys who both get drunk and do something very stupid. Both are willing in the moment but the aftermath.....we'll just wait and see.

 

The sun really had no business shining as brightly as it did that particular morning. It crept silently through the spaces in far too threadbare curtains, unaware and unconcerned of the havoc it was about to reek upon two peacefully slumbering figures in a small bed that seemed none too happy to have to bare the weight of an extra human. As maliciously as simple sunlight can ever get, it cast its gleaming rays unto the face of a spiky brown haired, 20-something male youth currently in the process of perfecting his best impression of a leaf blower running dangerously low on gas. Having no inherit defense against the onslaught of a new day, he is left with little choice but to rouse from what might have been the most peaceful sleep of his existence and come face-to-chest with the horrible consequences of the previous night. 

Riku really has no business looking this beautiful first thing in the morning.

Blinking wearily awake Sora looks up and is met with the almost heavenly vision of his best friend breathing deep and even in the soft glow of the morning light. Sora’s head is pillowed somewhere in the middle of his chest, giving him the perfect vantage point to observe the soft silver hair draped almost artfully around his face, and the serene expression he doesn’t think he’s ever once witnessed in Riku’s waking state. He snuggles deeper into the warm arm encircling him and for two, maybe three, brief and blissful seconds, Sora is indescribably happy.  Then awareness rushes him with the speed of a previously derailed freight train having somewhere very important to be that morning.

Thoughts and sensations flood him one after the other, all barely formed and at once eager to be addressed. By closing his eyes he’s able to pin down the most pressing of them, in no particular order and all conveniently without the memory of the underlying cause.

_‘Is this what a sea sponge tastes like? When did Riku get abs? I’m dizzy, please stop the ride so I can get off. I should buy new curtains. Why am I sticky? Seriously, who let him get this pretty? Why is Riku my bed? This is not my house. Wait…..I’m naked.’_

That last thought is accompanied by the immediate re-opening and widening of his eyes, followed by a pathetic groan as his vision swims and struggles to bring the world into focus. A sudden lurch in his stomach prompts him to roll over, and as he had absolutely zero foreknowledge of how much room was actually left on the bed, he is then deposited face down on the floor into a pile of discarded clothing. The only helpful input from his mind was that he really had to pee.

Another groan is muffled by the soft cotton of what he hopes are his own boxer shorts as Sora weakly tries to push himself off the ground. He fails multiple times before gathering what little strength is left in his shaking limbs to finally get himself upright. His stomach is immediately displeased with that decision and gives yet another lurch that threatens to upend whatever it is currently holding onto what Sora recognizes as Riku’s neatly cleaned white carpets.

He has enough presence of mind to cover his mouth and quickly snatch up the underwear he had just been using as a pillow before charging out of the room and across the hall into the bathroom. He sticks his head in the toilet and prays to whoever might be listening at the time to just let him drown. As he’s busy purging his own mistakes, his delayed mind finally decides to provide him with a fragmented highlight reel of what led him to this position.

 It starts with a brief memory of him using some pretty underhanded tactics to convince Riku to come with him to a party he had absolutely no desire to attend. Followed by another of leaving Riku alone at said party almost the second they walked in the door in favor of the myriad display of all forms of alcohol being set up in the kitchen. Fast forward to recalling himself bouncing over several hours, and shots, later to an equally drunk and sulking Riku he’d spotted in a corner and situating himself comfortably in his lap. Ending with the numbing feeling of a really great kiss.

Everything he can remember afterward seems to be nothing more than a fuzzy blur of color, sensation, and snippets of nonsensical conversation. He would never claim himself a genius, but it was not at all hard to catch the message that he had universally, undeniably, unequivocally, _fucked up_.

 He heaves again into the toilet.

-

Sometime after the coughing, sobbing, dry-heaving, and heart constricting mantra of ‘ _No, no, shit, fuck, no,_ ’ had calmed, Sora lifts his head out of the toilet with the steely resolve of a person who has just received a death sentence. With a grimace he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and gropes around for the toilet handle used to flush away what he could of the mess he’d made. With some difficulty he stands again to relieve himself of his other most pressing urge before flushing and taking two heavy, stumbling, steps over to the vanity.

He was not proud of what he saw in the mirror. His normally healthy tanned skin looked pale and clammy, his eyes were glassy and dark instead of shining, and even the perky mess of brown spikes on his head was droopy and lifeless. In short, he was a mess. It was only going to get worse from here. He runs a hand across his face and stares blankly downward, surprised to see a glass of water, two tabs of aspirin, a small bottle of mouthwash and a spare toothbrush all waiting for him beside the sink. He hadn’t even heard Riku come in, as if he didn’t already have enough to be embarrassed about.  

It took awhile to blink away the threatening tears and slap himself into freshening up, but he managed to emerge from the bathroom about fifteen minutes later feeling slightly more like a human. He walked back to the bedroom to find Riku sitting on the edge of his bed, bent over and holding his head in his hands. Riku was a great deal smarter than Sora would ever be, so he had more than likely been able to draw the same conclusions about the evening in probably half the time. It was not comforting at all to see his friend looking just as distressed as he felt.

Sora stood in the doorway letting Riku contemplate the carpet for a while longer before his inability to shut up for more than two minutes kicked in and provoked him into loudly clearing his throat. Riku’s head shot up out of his lap and his eyes gave an automatic full-body appraisal of the person in front of him, starting at the bottom and moving quickly passed the parts of Sora that were bare or only partially covered before settling pointedly on his face.

For a while they just stared at each other, each unable to come up with the right words to say after having drunkenly slept with their best friend. During this time Sora’s traitor brain decided to _oh so helpfully_ note that though his eyes were a little red around the edges and his hair was still a little ruffled from sleep, Riku still managed to look infuriatingly perfect even in a situation that could end their friendship forever, the bastard.  

Always the faster one, Riku was the first to tear his eyes away. He was on his feet and brushing past Sora in the doorway mumbling, ‘I’ll go make coffee,’ before Sora had finished his internal tantrum over his friend’s appearance, let alone thought of something productive to say.

“Right…. Coffee….Good idea,” Sora stammered to the now-empty hall before slapping a hand to his forehead in resignation. This was going to be the longest morning of his life.  

-

Sora takes his time redressing himself until he stops hearing the distinctive slamming of cupboards coming from the direction of the kitchen. He obsessively smooths the front of the now rumpled t-shirt he’d rescued from the floor and slowly makes his way down the hall and into the rather cramped living room of Riku’s small apartment. There’s a sheet and blanket draped carefully over the couch along with a small bag of his belongings sitting off to the side. Guilt and regret slowly creep through him as he remembers that was where he was _supposed_ to sleep last night.

Tearing his eyes away from the sofa he takes the final steps into the kitchen and goes to sit down across from Riku at the table. His silver head is in his hands once again and he visibly winces at the scraping of the old chair against the linoleum floor as Sora takes a seat. He doesn’t look up. In the background of the uncomfortable silence, the coffee machine gurgles and churns without a care for the awkward situation it’s found itself in the middle of.

As he sits down, Sora offhandedly notes a distinct lack of pain in a place where there should be pain, considering the situation he’d woken up in, and automatically files the thought away in a mental drawer of things to never be thought about again. The two sit in silence listening the consistent dripping of the coffee maker until it slows before stopping altogether. Sora fidgets with his necklace pendant as Riku carefully stands and walks over to pour the steaming liquid into cups, one of which he sets down in front of Sora, completely ignoring the muffled ‘thanks’.

Riku sits back down as Sora pointlessly stirs the contents of his cup with the spoon still left inside, almost as if he was trying to communicate his guilt using the soft tinkling sounds of silver against ceramic. His eyes dart around, trying to look anywhere but at his friend who’s cradling the cup of his own coffee in his hands like a lifeline while taking small, measured, sips. Eventually Sora picks up his own cup and sips at it, making a face at the taste even though Riku had gone through the trouble to add heavy amounts of sugar and cream the way he knows he likes it. He sets the cup back on the table and pushes it away slightly, he really can’t stand coffee even though he probably needs it.

“So….,” Sora finally breaks the silence. He peeks over at his friend, trying to get a feel for what he’s thinking, but a think curtain of silver hair keeps him from seeing his downcast face.

“So.” Riku sets his mug on the table and finally looks up, intense teal eyes piercing into Sora from across the table. It’s impossible to tell what he’s feeling from his voice and expression, but Sora still squirms in his seat under the gaze.

He sits up a little straighter, smiling nervously as he rubs a hand along the back of his neck, “I guess we….uh..”

“Yeah,” Riku interrupts, sighing the word like it had been knocked out of him, “we did.” He goes back to staring down at the table like he can’t even bare to look over.

“Do you, um, remember what happened?”

Riku shakes his head once before letting out another sigh that sounds equal parts sad and completely done with the conversation. “Does it matter? We can’t change it,” he looks up again as Sora sniffs once, desperately trying to contain the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes.

“Are you mad?” Sora’s voice is shaking, volume barely above a whisper, as he clearly pictures Riku’s hands curling into fists beneath the table like he always does when he’s upset.

“No.”

It doesn’t make him feel any better. It might actually make him feel worse. Riku’s face is turned away as he picks up his coffee again as a distraction, and it feels very much like he’s lying. Sora doesn’t have it in him to challenge the statement, and honestly probably doesn’t want to hear the real answer anyhow. He summons the last of his courage to speak one final question, like he can feel their bonds of friendship slowly shattering apart, “What do we do now?”

“What do you mean?” Riku’s cup lands on the table with a hard thud as he looks over at Sora with something almost like fear flashing in his eyes.

“Are we… still friends?” Sora closes his eyes, bracing for impact.

“Don’t be stupid,” the words are meant to be teasing, but the rough quality and insistence of his tone make them come out much harsher than originally intended. At the wounded look on Sora’s face and the tear that falls unexpectedly, Riku immediately softens his voice and starts to backpedal. “I mean, of course we’re still friends. What happened, happened, but that doesn’t mean anything has to change between us,” He tries to smile a little but doesn’t think it ends up successful.

Sora sniffs again and looks over at him, confused. “So, we can just forget about it?”

“If that's what you want to do.”

Something about this feels very wrong, but Sora is still willing to jump at the chance to save their friendship. He can’t lose Riku, doing so would be like carving out a part of his soul and stomping the remainder on the side of a curb. There’s an out and he’s going to take it, unresolved feelings be damned. Guys don’t talk about this stuff anyway.

“Ok. This…..never happened.” Sora sighs deeply and puts his elbow on the table, extending his hand out.

“Never happened,” Riku confirms, clapping his hand into Sora’s with a nod and squeezing once before withdrawing to again cradle his coffee in both his hands. They fall back into silence, but the tension has left the room. Only the last traces of awkwardness linger as they both try to calm the turbulent situation they had woken up in. Sora picks up his coffee again and takes a long drink only to end up gagging and spitting it across the table and down the front of his shirt.

Riku chuckles from behind his mug as his childish friend sheepishly smiles and grabs some napkins to wipe up the mess, pausing in confusion to look down at the front of the shirt he’s wearing. “Huh, I don’t remember this.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Riku swipes his hair behind one of his ears. “That’s  _my_ shirt, you dork. And you’re wearing it inside out.”

“Guess that explains why I don’t know what xeR mureV is.”

They both dissolve into laughter and just like that, everything is fine again. Their friendship is iron, and it’s going to take something more than an unspoken, drunken, one-night-stand to break them apart.

Sora keeps laughing, but the smile isn’t reaching his eyes.

This is fine.

Everything will be fine.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

They were fine.

Everything was fine.

It really didn’t matter that Sora hadn’t managed to get more than a two-word text out of Riku for the better part of a week now. It didn’t matter that for the first time in almost eighteen years, barring sickness and emergency, Riku hadn’t randomly shown up unannounced at Sora’s in the middle of the week to insult his life choices and watch terrible television. It wasn’t Riku’s fault that someone hadn’t shown up for work on Friday, so he’d canceled their standing lunch meeting to go and fill in.

It was fine.

Trying his best not to think about it too heavily, Sora figured this was normal considering the circumstance. It was pretty stupid to assume that just because they’d made some silly agreement both of them would actually forget that anything happened overnight. They just needed time, maybe a little (or a lot), of space, and eventually things would work out. Riku couldn’t avoid him forever, he was far too annoying to ever let that happen.

 **Sora (3:47 pm):** Ur coming to Rox’s bday dinner 2morrow, right? _Seen 3:49 pm_

“Day six of the Great Riku Famine of ’19; resources are low, and morale is getting even lower. Subject ‘S’ has been spotted with ‘lost puppy’ expression no less than six times in the past three hours. We fear the situation may be dire, send noods. Good luck and Godspeed.”

Let it be known that Sora’s brother Roxas is a jerk. He’s also getting way too good at dodging Sora’s improvised projectiles.

The blonde punk in question is currently curled up on the floor and cackling from his defensible  position behind Sora’s couch. He is surrounded by four throw pillows, an empty cup, two remotes, one Play Plus controller, and both of his brother’s shoes. Across the room Sora is panting and looking around wildly for something else to throw after enduring three straight hours of teasing from the insufferable menace.

“Hey, come on, you know you’re not allowed to kill me the night before my birthday. There would be no Naminé cake. You love Naminé cake, Sora.” A drool-covered dog toy goes flying across the room and rebounds off the wall with a wet squelch right next to Roxas’ head. Roxas stops talking.

It takes a few minutes, but eventually Sora finally gives up the weapon hunt and collapses into his favorite recliner. A great deal of effort goes into making a show of glaring at the head of blonde spikes slowly rising to peek out from his hiding spot and ensure the coast is clear.

“You know, it really says something about you that when faced with death you’re only worried about cake,” Sora huffs from the chair. His arms are crossed petulantly in front of his chest and he’s pouting in that adorable way that makes Roxas want to hit him with a pillow, so he throws one.

“Don’t complain because I have priorities.”

Sora bats the pillow out of the air with his forearm as Roxas ducks back behind the couch to avoid the anticipated second volley of the living room arsenal. When it doesn’t come after a few minutes he figures the unspoken truce has been reached and stands up to dust himself off, only to be smacked in the face with the pillow he’d relinquished.

“Ok, I deserved that,” Roxas stumbles for a moment before regaining his balance, only to be hit again, “That one was uncalled for.”

When Sora laughs and tosses himself and the pillow back onto the couch he knows it’s finally safe to come out. Roxas hops back into the room proper with an armful of collected ammo that he drops unceremoniously onto his brother’s lap for him to deal with before flopping back and making himself comfortable. “So, I’m guessing Riku isn’t going to make it tomorrow? Tragic as that may be.”

“Dunno, he hasn’t said anything.”

“Didn’t you send that text like four hours ago? What hell universe have I dropped into where the two of you aren’t inside each other’s pockets every single second of the day, and where can I sign up for permanent membership? Pretty sure the last time Riku took more than twenty minutes to respond to one of your texts he was being rushed to the hospital with a broken wrist.”

Roxas didn’t know what to do with the heavy silence that fell over the room, or the pathetic slump to Sora’s shoulders as he tried to bury himself further into the couch. His brother was usually the most obnoxiously happy and optimistic person he knew, and this state of advanced depression was new territory for the both of them. Usually some teasing and a few good play-fights were enough to get him to at least crack a smile, if not dispel the sadness entirely, but he’d been at it a good three hours and was only rewarded with the entire living room being thrown at his head. Then again, there had never been a time where Sora and Riku went more than three days without speaking either. It didn’t matter to Roxas what was going on, there was no excuse on the planet good enough for putting such a sad expression on the literal personification of the sun.  

“Hey, cheer up. Remember what mom always says: ‘keep that up and your face is going to stay that way forever’. Wouldn’t want to go the rest of your life looking like someone just shat in your cereal, they’d never let you back into Disneyland again,” Roxas poked at Sora’s face, making as much of a nuisance of himself as possible until finally, _finally_ , he was met with a familiar smile. Followed by another pillow to the face, worth it.

“Come on grunge-baby, just because it’s your birthday tomorrow doesn’t mean I won’t kick your ass at Smash Bros,” with cheer as fake as Roxas had ever seen Sora stood from the couch and went to set up the game.

They played games until midnight, as was tradition the night before either of their _exactly_ nine month  apart birthdays. During the entire marathon Sora checked his phone about once every five minutes and never got a response. Roxas could only hope he was only imagining Sora getting visibly more depressed as the night went on, but he knew something was very, very, wrong.

He was going to kick Riku’s ass.

 **Riku (1:26 am):** Sure 

-

Every year, Sora and Roxas held their birthday dinners at the Twilight Bistro Garden, the cheapest, greasiest, seediest Chinese food restaurant in the entirety of the Destiny Islands. What started as a joke between broke high school students had quickly become another of their unofficial ‘traditions’ and was one of only three times in the year that their respective friend groups ever interacted.

Sora stood beside a chair in the middle of one side of the cheap plastic table that looked like it hadn’t seen more than a damp dish cloth in the way of cleaning for about five years. At the head of the table, Roxas’ best friend Axel pulled out a chair and pretended to dust it off carefully before clearing his throat and announcing loudly to their reluctant patio audience of one scandalized old couple and one burnt out student sleeping on top of a pile of textbooks and chilled lo-mein, “Presenting, to the shock and awe of absolutely no one, our one-day-only lord, savior, and magnanimous ruler: King Roxas!”

The entrance to the patio swung open and Roxas walked out as regally as he could ever look with a ratty old Burger King crown perched sadly on his messy blonde spikes. The flannel shirt tied around his neck was held up in back by the dainty blonde Naminé, who was flushed red and giggling, as fellow grunge-baby Hayner followed behind trumpeting out of tune fanfare from the hands cupped around his mouth. It was good thing this place was used to them by now.

As the ‘King’ passed by the table to take his seat Sora dropped into a low bow. On his left, in a fit of giggles of her own, his best girl Kairi did the same. Both of them did their best to ignore the empty space on his right. Roxas took his seat and spared a second to laugh gleefully at the ridiculous lengths his friends were willing to go to make him feel special for a day, “Alright. Sit down losers.”

The group sits and places their order with the old and very unimpressed Chinese women who drew the short straw in serving them that day. Hayner sits across from Sora and immediately pulls him into a conversation about the special effects of some action movie he’s never heard of. Beside him, Roxas and Axel engage in a petty slap fight over control of the crown. Kairi and Naminé laugh from the end of the table where they can simultaneously judge and ignore their stupid boys. To Sora’s relief, no one mentions the absence of his silver-haired shadow.

Forty-Five minutes later their food has been delivered. Having lost the fight earlier Axel is now kneeling beside Roxas at the table placing reverent punishment kisses to his knuckles and feet in between bites of some way-too-spicy concoction that’s making his face turn as red as his hair. Hayner has somehow drawn both Naminé and Kairi into the action movie conversation, and Sora is really struggling to follow along with the detailed physics explanation of what it would actually take to launch a compact car into a helicopter while fighting to keep from staring sadly at the empty chair beside him.

The door to the patio swings open, and just like every time that door opened for the hour or so they’d been at the restaurant Sora’s head expectantly turned. It was the waitress again, this was getting sad. The others at the table were starting to notice something was off. Sure, Roxas and Riku didn’t exactly get along but Riku had never missed a birthday dinner, if only to make sure Axel didn’t try to goad Sora into drinking another cup of chili oil.

Noticing the way Sora deflated once again as his hope was dashed, Kairi covered his hand with one of her own and gave a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry, he’ll be here,” she whispered, rubbing the back of his palm with her thumb.

“Thanks Kai.”

If Sora believed her, he certainly didn’t show it.

After they had finished eating and the table was cleared, Naminé stood and presented Roxas with a small white cardboard box. Inside was a perfectly decorated white and black checkerboard cake with a little plastic skateboard on top. The girl really was an artist in every sense of the word. Everyone fawned appropriately, taking pictures and hailing Naminé as the one true Cake Queen until Axel lost his patience and pulled a just slightly too large knife from out of seemingly no where and sliced the cake in half.

In the middle of the commotion, the patio door had opened again. Riku stood off to the side laughing to himself as Roxas and Naminé took turns punching Axel in the arm for ruining the pretty cake, happy to remain unnoticed for a little while longer. He waited until the cake had been cut and everyone served before walking forward and kneeling in front of Roxas.

“Forgive the tardiness, my liege, mine horse doth sprung a leak. I come baring a gift in hope you’ll overlook the trespass,” Riku reached into his jacket pocket and held a little red envelope out to Roxas from between his fingers, inside was a gift card to his favorite ice-cream parlor. Roxas knew this because it was the only thing that ever passed between them, aside from bitter conversation, the three times a year they were forced to interact.

From his position knelt on the ground, Riku missed the scathing death-glare sent his direction the moment Roxas realized he’d actually shown up. He also missed the pleading look Sora sent his brother to just _be cool,_ along with the awkward glances exchanged by the rest of the table. Roxas scoffed and shook his head, “I suppose you’re forgiven, _peasant_.”

If Riku noticed his words contained a little too much venom, and that he snatched the card out of his hand just a little too fast, he certainly didn’t show it. He stood wordlessly and took his seat next to Sora, ignoring the stab of guilt at the sight of a piece of cake waiting for him, even though no one had known he was there when it was cut.

“Sorry I’m late, car trouble,” he muttered to the brunette beside him, who was no doubt searching for an explanation of why he’d practically been stood up.

“It’s ok. I’m just glad you made it,” they both look away from each other and each take a bite of cake.

At that point Axel took it upon himself to cut the tension in the room by stuffing a piece of cake in Roxas’ face. Everyone else at the table drew their attention away to laugh at the wide eyed, baffled, look on the face of their King as he was covered in icing. He slowly reaches up to wipe the excess cake off his face and shoots Axel one of his patented glares of death.

“Oh, it’s on.”

Sometime after Roxas had chased Axel around the table four times and pounced on him to smear cake in _his_ face, the waitress slammed their check on the table.

While their friends are distracted, Sora and Riku continue on in silence. There’s so much Sora wants to say. _Why are you avoiding me?  Why didn’t you call me? Where have you been?_ But at the risk of sounding like a crazy, jealous, girlfriend, he eats his cake instead. That doesn’t stop him from looking over every two seconds to see if Riku is showing any signs of missing him. Really, it’s completely ridiculous how much he had missed Riku; how much he was still missing him even though they were sitting right next to each other.

Riku, of course, didn’t seem to be affected by anything at all. Even in the chaos happening around them he sat calmly eating cake like he hadn’t been ghosting his best friend for a whole week. Sora wanted to punch him….or kiss him. Whatever came first. This silence was stupid.

“So,” Sora starts, then stops because he can’t think of anything to say that isn’t just essentially screaming ‘ _Why are you like this?!?!_ ’

“So.” Riku finishes chewing and finally looks over.

“How’ve you been?”

“Busy. You?”

It’s funny how Riku was only ever ‘busy’ whenever there was something in his life that he was trying to avoid. The rest of the time all tasks were pretty much considered optional since he lived off his parents’ considerable wealth and only worked to keep himself from going insane. You would think by now he would learn that he couldn’t ever lie like that to his best friend.

“Same old,” Sora hated how awkward this was. It had never been hard to talk to Riku, _ever_. Even when he was coming out as bisexual, or confessing at age sixteen that he had a monster crush on their mutual best friend. Riku looked away again and Sora practically flipped the table. “This isn’t working.”

“What isn’t working?”

“Forgetting.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Riku pushed himself away from the table, still looking anywhere but in Sora’s direction. His hands curled into fists at his side for a brief moment before he pushed his chair back in, catching the attention of everyone else.

“I got to get going. The shop is supposed to know what’s wrong with my car by now. Happy Birthday Roxas, thanks for the cake.” He turns and walks toward the door, ignoring everyone around him.

From the ground Roxas scoffs again, “Yeah, thanks for bothering I guess, asshole.”

Riku pauses a moment then walks out, leaving everyone bewildered and concerned.  Kairi looks over at Sora, who was shaking in his seat with barely restrained sobs. She moved to put a hand on his shoulder but pulls it away when he forcefully pushes his chair back, running to follow Riku out the door. He catches up to him in the middle of the parking lot. He grabs Riku’s arm in a firm grip, trying to force him to turn around, but he roots himself in place and refuses to move.

“What do you want Sora?” The words are growled out, dark in a way that Sora has only heard from him when he was really, truly, hurt.

“I want you to talk to me, dammit,” Sora’s crying now, and he really doesn’t care who’s watching.

Fists curl; more tears fall, “You’re the one that wanted to forget, do a better job of it.”

“Forget the night, not our _friendship_.”

“I can’t,” Riku’s voice is so soft Sora can barely hear what he said. He pulls his arm away and keeps walking, leaving Sora to cry in the empty parking lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may have noticed that an additional chapter was added to the count. I have no excuse for this except that the birthday party scene ran away from me.


	3. Chapter 3

It took all five of the remaining friends about half an hour to scrape Sora off the pavement and load him into the backseat of Roxas’ car that night. He spent the ride home alternating between sobbing and apologizing profusely to his brother for ruining his birthday. Roxas, the fantastic sibling he was, did his part by staying mostly silent except to assure Sora that he wasn’t mad, at least at him. He spent most of the ride contemplating murder.

After arriving at the small two-bedroom house shared between them, Roxas cut the car engine and climbed out, ready to support his brother on the short way inside of the house in case he still couldn’t remember how to walk properly. He was worse than a toddler sometimes. He thankfully wasn’t needed as Sora opened the car all by himself and shuffled his way to the front door. Roxas followed behind until he found his way to his bedroom and collapsed face first onto his mattress.

Roxas crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame as Sora tossed around on the bed, burying himself underneath layers of blankets and pillows. When he finally settled down Roxas knocked on the frame to make it known that he was still there and would not be leaving without some sort of conversation.

 “So, you going to tell me what happened or am I going to be forced into committing a felony without due cause?” he examined his fingernails, absently wondering just how hard it would be to pry someone’s eyes out of their skull bare handed. Roxas was a deep thinker like that.

“Please don’t make this worse Rox, it’s not entirely his fault,” the lump of bedclothes rolled over to reveal two watery blue eyes peeking over the top.

Roxas sighed deeply, grinding his teeth as he continued to contemplate his hands. “You know, I’m getting really sick of that bullshit, Sora. Every single time he does something shitty that hurts you, you’re always the first to defend him with ‘Oh, it’s not his fault Roxas,’ or ‘he didn’t really mean it, that’s just how he is’, meanwhile he’s _never_ the one stuck picking you up off the floor after he’s done stomping all over you.”

“Sorry,” the blanket lump sniffles.

Eyes wide and teeth bared, Roxas crosses the room and shoves the lump over on his back. Grabbing  at the approximate location of his shoulders, he shakes Sora violently trying to rattle some sense into his thick skull. “I don’t want you to be sorry, I want you to be angry! I want you to stop crawling back to him with your tail between your legs five minutes after he’s smeared your heart against the wall! Fuck, Sora, be assertive for once in your damn life…..or at least let me punch him once,” he stops shaking his brother and sits beside him on the bed.

“Would that help you hate him less?” Sora uncovers his upper half and sits up against the headboard.

Roxas huffs, “No, but it would help me feel better for a while.”

“What made you start hating him so much in the first place? Didn’t you two got along when we were kids?” Titling his head to the side he tries to recall a time back when Roxas and Riku weren’t at each other’s throats.

“When I was nine he stole one of my Pokémon erasers.”

Sora blinked, “You’ve held a thirteen-year grudge over a pencil eraser?”

“It was my _favorite_ ,” Roxas insists, poking Sora in the chest for emphasis. Sora shoots him a look that clearly communicates, ‘ _you’re ridiculous and clearly have no business giving out life advice_ ’ and laughs at his wince.  The blonde sighs and looks his brother in the eye, all teasing and humor gone from his face, “Really, I just don’t like the way he treats you, it’s like you’re a piece of his property or something. But he’s not my boyfriend and it’s not my life, so I can only comment from the sidelines.”

Sora groans heavily and slumps back down the headboard, landing with a soft ‘thud’ on top of his many pillows. He glares ineffectively in the general direction of his brother and insists, for what must be the millionth time, “he’s not my boyfriend, Rox.”

Roxas’ eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and he stands and walks toward the door, smirking to himself. He pauses in the doorway before leaving the room, “You guys might not be big on the lovey-dovey  romance, but he’s been your boyfriend since the third grade, Sora. I think you might be the only one who doesn’t know that.”

Sora throws a pillow at him.

-

Another week passes in the barren, Riku-less, wasteland of Sora’s life. The pining is getting insufferable, even to him, but he just can’t bring himself to function normally when he feels this _bad._ Roxas stopped speaking to him three days ago, no longer able to tolerate his constant sighing, sniffling, and generally pitiful demeanor. He’d been sent home from his work at the local Galaxy Toys the day before after breaking out in tears over a display of Verum Rex action figures.

He sat alone on his couch in the middle of a sunny Saturday afternoon still in yesterday’s clothes, staring blankly at the Home Shopping Network and trying to decide if buying a new lamp in the shape of a dog would help improve his mood. Speaking of dogs, his dog Goofy was currently in the process of trying to claw through their front door in response to a loud, consistent, pounding. He should probably do something about that.

Getting up took far more effort than anything in recent memory, and walking to the door made him want to fall back in bed and sleep for a year. Goofy charges out the door the second it opens to bounce excitedly all over the blur of pink and red standing behind it. His brain eventually catches up as Kairi gives him a disapproving once-over and he struggles to get a single word out of his sandpaper throat, “Hey.”

“Don’t you ‘hey’ me mister, I’ve been calling you for the past two hours. Just because Riku went MIA doesn’t mean you don’t have other friends who are very, very, worried,” Kairi pushes past him into the house with Goofy trailing behind her, eager for attention from someone resembling a person.

“Sorry. I, uh, forgot to charge my phone,” he looks around the living room but doesn’t see the device, it had probably been lost inside the couch cushions again.

She levels him with a look full of so much pity it makes him want to gag, “I heard what happened yesterday. This has got to stop, Sora. Go get in the shower, we’re going back to my house to spend the day stuffing our faces full of sugar and watching Disney movies. Then you’re going tell me what happened so we can fix this mess before the both of you end up in the hospital.”

“Kai, I don’t…”

“NOW, Sora.”  

He knows there’s no point in arguing with her, and he really doesn’t have the energy anyway, so he shuffles into the bathroom to shower and finally change while Kairi packs him an overnight bag and locates his phone. She practically pushes him out the front door and into the passenger seat of her sweet-smelling blue car and peals out of the driveway without a word. Sora slumps in his seat and rests his head against the window. He appreciates what she was trying to do, but he just wants to go back to sleep.

Kairi glares at him from the driver’s seat, letting out a frustrated sigh and tapping her fingers in irritation on the steering wheel, “I swear, the two of you are absolutely _hopeless_. I really don’t know why I bother.”

Sora perked up a little, “Did you talk to Riku?”

“No, but not for lack of trying. His Curtain of Brooding is so thick right now I couldn’t even scratch the surface. I cornered him at work the other day and he actually threatened to have me thrown out, can you believe that?” she flicks on her turn signal and doesn’t miss the shocked expression on Sora’s face.

“I guess he kinda deserves to feel a little bad after what he did last week. He’s being such a jerk to everyone,” he’s not used to feeling vindictive, but it does actually help a little. Maybe Roxas is on to something.

The car comes to a stop at a red light and Kairi looks over, concern written all over her face, “It’s more than just ‘a little bad’ Sora. Selphie told me she caught him crying in the break room after his shift the other day.”  

Scratch that, Roxas is never right about anything. Sora scoffs, “Riku doesn’t cry.”

“Over you he does,” Kairi guns the gas so hard Sora’s head is thrown back against the seat.

-

The rest of the trip is short and silent. They pull up to the driveway of Kairi’s giant house and Sora slams the car door way too hard after spilling out. She can almost touch the black rain cloud over his head. ‘ _I should have done this sooner_ ,’ she thinks to herself. This was the last time she would be trusting either of them to be adults and sort out their own problems.

She drags Sora into the house and up to her room, plopping him down on the foot of her queen size bed and throwing the bag she’d packed at him, “Put your pjs on and pick a movie, I’ll be back in a minute with snacks. Don’t even think of trying to escape, I’ve got security on high alert.”

‘Security’ being her eighty-five-year-old grandmother who had a scary sense of where everyone was at any given time. It had made sneaking out hell in high school. She runs down into the kitchen and loads up with the pre-purchased haul of chocolate, ice-cream, cookies, gummy candy, and soda before rushing back to her room. Sora thankfully has obeyed her orders and is curled up on the bed in his Tigger onesie with the menu for _The Fox and the Hound_ playing in the background on the flat screen TV mounted on the wall. She has her work cut out for her.

He cries during the entire movie, completely unashamed. Kairi consoles him with cookies and backrubs and helpfully disposes of the half a box of snotty tissues he goes through without a word.  She pets his head to calm him down as the credits roll and by the time the menu came back up he had stopped sniffling and let her get up to change the movie so he could find the rest of the cookies.

Good, hard part over.

She sticks in _Aladdin_ and sits beside him marveling at how quickly Sora can go from a twenty-one-year-old sobbing mess in a Tigger onesie to a six-year-old child singing about princes and magic carpets with gummy worms hanging out of his mouth and not a care in the world. This was her best friend and yes, she was keeping him.

After two more movies the snacks had been consumed, and Kairi had coaxed him into letting her spread a detox mask on his face and shape his nails. Then at the end of _Frozen,_ after a very serious questioning conversation about the existence of true love; she shut off the tv, pulled Sora back into her lap and flicked him in the forehead, “Okay goober, time to talk.”  

He scrunched his face up and nuzzled into her thigh trying to hide, whining, “No, don’t wanna.”

“Too bad. Whatever you’ve been doing to deal with this mess isn’t working, so you’re going to tell me what happened and we’re going to work it out,” she let him scoot away in order to sit up, and waited patiently for him to start speaking.

What eventually fell out of his mouth was a garbled mess of sounds and syllables she had no way of making sense of. “Stop,” she rubbed his back, encouraging him to breathe. “Again, human words this time.”

Taking a very deep breath, he closed his eyes and forced out, “I slept with Riku.”

Kairi couldn’t contain the gasp of shock, or the gleeful smile came with the news. It was about time. She loved the both of them to death but they were so dense when it came to their own feelings it took everything she had not to just spell it out for them. She forced herself to calm down, the conversation wasn’t over yet.

“ At least, I think I did. We got really drunk at Leon’s party and the next morning we were cuddled up naked in his bed. I….don’t actually remember what happened. When I tried to talk to Riku the next day he was all kinds of avoidant and I thought he was mad at me, so I figured the best thing was to just pretend it never happened and move on. I messed up so bad Kai.” He starts sobbing again and she brings his head down onto her shoulder.

She lets him cry awhile longer before letting go and grabbing him more tissues. “Did Riku say he was mad at you?” she waits as Sora scrubs his eyes and shakes his head.

“He didn’t say _anything_ Kairi. Just sat at the table drinking coffee like he expected me to figure everything out on my own. Well guess what? I’m an idiot, of course I got it wrong. Now he won’t speak to me and _I still don’t get it_ ,” he blows his nose.  

Gods this is so much worse than she thought. Damn Riku for being too freaking scared to ever let an emotion come within three feet of him. Damn Sora for not being able to see three feet in front of his own face. Damn them both for needing both alcohol and divine intervention just to talk like normal people.

“You’re not an idiot Sora, and Riku has some pretty heavy fault here too, but I agree that you probably did the worst thing imaginable in that situation,” she put a hand on his shoulder for support but that didn’t stop her words from hurting like she knew they would. She felt bad about it, but it was very important that Sora figured out exactly why this had gone so wrong.

“Kairi the only thing he said to me was that things didn’t have to change, and he agreed so easily when I suggested we just forget about it that I thought it was what he was hinting at. I don’t know what he wanted and I feel terrible for screwing it up.”

“Ok, I’m going to ask you some questions to try and help you with this, but I need you to answer me honestly, ok?” Kairi pauses and lets Sora think for a while, happy when he eagerly nods his head. “How did you feel waking up with Riku….like that?”

“Confused and scared mostly, but also really, really happy. Like everything was finally right with the world when I had his arm around me,” Sora smiles, practically glowing with the memory of waking up in Riku’s arms.

“Did you say anything to him after you woke up?”

“Nah, I kinda rolled off the bed and ran right into the bathroom,” he thinks back to that morning as hard as he can, and he smacks his forehead with a sudden revelation. Kairi stares at him, urging him to share. “I guess….I was kinda freaking out in the bathroom after I remembered some stuff about the way I’d acted at the party. I figured we only did things because of me, and was so worried Riku was going to mad about me dragging him out to the party in the first place.”

“Freaking out how?”

“I thought it was only in my head but I kept repeating ‘no’ and some other bad words, I was probably crying too, and throwing up,” Sora rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed at the way he’d acted. Wait….embarrassed…… “Shit Kairi, Riku was in the bathroom with me. I didn’t even notice until later when I saw he left stuff for me.”

Really, she’d figured as much. There’s no way Riku wouldn’t have woken up when Sora rolled out of bed, and no way he would have been able to leave Sora alone after hearing him get sick. Hell, he probably went into the bathroom to hold his hair and rub his back. She was almost feeling sorry for Riku again.

“So, you woke up naked in his arms, rolled out of bed, ran into the bathroom, had a minor panic attack where it’s possible you were chanting the word ‘no’ over and over, ignored that Riku was even in there when he went to check on you, then came out and later suggested to him that you forget the whole thing ever happened. What does that look like to you Sora?” Watching realization dawn on Sora’s face would be a wondrous thing to behold, if only the situation wasn’t so sad.

“Oh…crap…that’s…terrible. He probably thinks…..but I didn’t mean….Oh no,” Sora curls in on himself again and flinches when Kairi goes to brush hair out of his face.

She hates to make this worse, but he needs the whole picture before figuring out what to do, since it’s unlikely Riku is ever going to say anything. “Sora, just a few more questions. You still with me?” He nods sadly, “Ok…..how many people has Riku ever had a romantic relationship with?”

There’s a very long pause while Sora thinks. “Well, there was that time in high school when that girl blackmailed him into dating her by threatening to post pictures of the time I had him dress up as Tinkerbell with me for that Disney costume contest. He got mad after two days and just posted the pictures himself. Then there was that guy he flirted with our entire freshman year of college that looked kinda like me, but he turned out to be a real jerk. And….well….I guess that’s it. Why does any of that matter?”

Someone get this boy some glasses so can see what’s right in front him. Kairi really didn’t get paid enough for this. She pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head, “Ok, last question Sora. How many times in his _life_ do you think Riku has ever woken up the way he woke up with you two weeks ago?”

Sora’s eyes go wide. He opens and shuts his mouth repeatedly but no words form. For several minutes, he lays perfectly still. When he speaks again his voice is small and broken, “That was his first time?”

“I can’t tell you that Sora, but I figure it’s pretty likely considering how skilled Riku is with letting people close to him,” Kairi shuts her eyes. Yeah, she officially now feels bad for Riku. It’s still his fault for not _saying_ anything, but it’s easy to see now why he didn’t.

“I need to talk to him,” Sora uncurls himself from the bed and stands up.

“Yeah,” Kairi still has her eyes closed and is unaware of Sora grabbing his bag and heading toward the door.

“I mean right now. I’m going over there,” he grabs the doorknob and Kairi has to launch herself across the room to stop him.

“Sora I really don’t think that’s the best idea right now, he’s hurting a lot and just showing up at his door is probably going to make it worse.”

“Please Kairi, I _have_ to talk to him,” he’s shaking in her arms as she holds him back. She knows there’s nothing she could say that’s going to keep him from marching across town to be with his best friend. This is a losing battle.

“Alright, let me grab my keys.”

-

It’s almost midnight, and someone is pounding on the door to Riku’s apartment with such insistence that could only mean it’s either a cop, or the culmination of all his mistakes coming back to bite him in the ass.

“Riku, I know you’re in there, I can hear the awful vinyl scratching of your record player.”

Ah, the second one then. It was bound to happen eventually, better get this over with before he wakes up the entire floor.

It takes him way too long to convince himself to open the door, and when he finally does he nearly gets punched in the face by his best friend rearing up to continue pounding on the door. Not that he wouldn’t have deserved it.

Riku’s eyes widen at the sight of his wild-eyed best friend at his door in Tigger pajamas with his hair pulled back in a sparkly pink headband. Two seconds later Sora flings his arms around his neck and pulls him down into what has to be their strangest hug on record.

Sora seems reluctant to release him, but when he does he’s out of breath. Bent over and panting he huffs out, “We. Need. To. Talk.”

Riku lets him in the door.

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, The Fox and the Hound is probably the worst movie ever to watch when you're fighting with your friends. Don't make that mistake.


	4. Chapter 4

Sora walks in the apartment and flops down on the couch. Riku closes the door and crosses the room to remove the needle from the skipping record that stopped playing about an hour ago. He turns and crosses his arms in front of his chest, looking over with a teasing grin, “That’s a good look on you.”

He’s confused for a moment before he looks down and realizes that he never changed out of his stupid onesie and was still wearing the headband Kairi put in his hair so she could smear that weird face stuff on him. It’s a good thing his friend had taken pity on him and driven him over here or he probably would have gotten himself arrested.

“Well, you know. New year, new you….and all that,” he pulls the headband off and lets his spikes bounce back into place as Riku chuckles.

“It’s July.”

They laugh and Sora’s heart gives a sharp pang with just how much he’s missed this. He absolutely has to do something to fix it. He looks over at Riku desperately and they both stop laughing. Once again the air is tense and awkward and the only thing he can think of is, “So…”

Riku sighs, “So.”

Damn this is getting old. Sora forces his brain into submission and starts again, “So, someone politely informed me today that I’ve been an idiot.”

“And this is different from any other day, how?” Riku laughs again and Sora throws a pillow at him.

“Shut up, I’m being serious. I was talking to Kairi today about what happened, and she pointed out some things that I never would have thought of on my own. I owe you an apology Riku; a big, fat, huge apology that I’m not even sure how to say. I should never have suggested that we just forget about what happened without talking about it first. I know it hurt you, and I’m sorry,” Sora searches Riku’s face for some kind of feedback, but all he gets is silence.

“You told Kairi?” He askes darkly after a few seconds.

“Yeah, I did. I wouldn’t have, but she kinda forced it out of me. She was right anyway, we’re both being really stupid about this.”

Riku uncrosses his arms and stomps angerly into the kitchen, “I’m making tea, do you want some?”

It takes everything Sora has not to scream. “Dammit. NO Riku, I don’t want tea, coffee, juice, milk, hot chocolate, or any of the nasty whiskey hidden behind the fridge that I know you’re reaching for right now. What I want is for you to come sit on this couch and talk about your feelings like a damn adult.”

Liquid pours and a glass slams down on the counter; Riku comes back into the room without a cup of tea. “This coming from the man sitting on my couch in a Tigger onesie,” he flops back and throws an arm over his face. “Fine, talk.”

“W-well,” Sora stammers, not sure how to proceed, “Kairi kinda pointed out a gaping hole in my knowledge about you earlier and… Damn it I’m just going to say it, Riku are you gay?”

Riku smacks his arm on the couch and quickly turns his head to glare at his friend, “Where the hell did THAT come from”

Sora cringes and sinks back into the couch, wishing he had the words to be more delicate. There’s no turning back now. “I think the biggest reason I panicked that day was that I had no idea if you liked me, or guys in general I guess, like that. I was scared that I forced you into something you didn’t ever want while you were too far gone to care. I really can’t remember what happened that night, just that I was being a clingy drunk and was all over you.”

“You….you really don’t remember?” The intensity in Riku’s eyes is getting scary, but Sora doesn’t shy away.

“No, I don’t. Just bits and pieces.”

“Fuck,” Riku throws himself backward again and re-covers his eyes. “I thought….I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought. I was wrong, and made it worse.”

“It DOES matter what you thought Riku, that’s why we’re having this conversation. Your feelings matter. I think the whole reason we’re here right now is that you were once again so busy looking out for me that you ignored yourself, and it backfired, spectacularly.”

Riku’s breath hitched, “You’re right. I severely overestimated my ability to pretend like nothing happened. I tried, because I honestly thought that you did remember and wanted to just take it all back, but I couldn’t do it.”

“Does that mean you do remember what happened?” Sora looks over at him, eyes narrowing.

Riku nods, “Everything.”

“Why did you lie to me?”

“I thought it would make it easier,” he sighs. “You’re wrong to think it was your fault though. It wasn’t you that caused it, it was me.”

The confession hangs in the air. For the second time that night Sora is stunned speechless and is forced  to reevaluate everything he thought he knew about the situation. Shaking his head, he grabs Riku’s arm and pulls it away from his face so he’s forced to look him in the eye. “I think you need to tell me what happened.”

-

_“Pleeease, Riku? It’s the last party Leon’s going to throw all summer and everyone is there! I HAVE to go”_

_“Then go Sora. I’m not stopping you, I just won’t come. You know I hate Leon’s parties.”_

_“I can’t go alone, they’ll eat me alive. I need you there to watch out for me.”_

_“If you’re going to make a habit of going places like that, you’re going to have to learn to watch out for yourself. I can’t always be there to bail you out.”_

_“Fine. Maybe I’ll call up Vanitas and see if he wants to go, haven’t heard from him in a while”_

_“Sora, Vanitas is more likely to slip drugs in your drink when you’re not looking than watch out for you”_

_“Guess that’s something else I’ll have to learn for myself.”_

_5….4….3….2….1_

_“FINE, I’ll go to the damn party, but you can’t make me like it. And the second some drunk girl with barely any clothing on tries to sit in my lap I’m leaving. See you in an hour”_

_“You’re the best Riku.”_

_“And don’t you ever forget it.”_

_As Riku hangs up the phone Sora smirks victoriously; getting his way was always too easy with him._

_-_

“Yeah, I remember that part. And I’m sorry for that, by the way. It was really mean of me to act like I was thinking of dragging that asshole back into our lives just for a party. I just wanted you to come with me.”

Riku’s face softens, “I know.”

-

_The party is in full swing by the time they arrive. Sora’s greeted happily by several people as they walk through the door. Leon’s house is huge, and his dad for some reason is all too happy to let him throw raging parties every other weekend to celebrate his stoic son finally making some friends. Drinks are thrown into their hands and Sora pulls them both in every direction, doing his best to stop and talk with as many people as possible._

_Eventually Riku gets fed up with socializing and walks to the kitchen to grab the first bottle of strong alcohol he can get his hands on from the seemingly endless selection. From there he retreats to a corner where he can watch the party go on around him without being bothered by anyone._

_The bottle of vodka he grabbed is a quarter gone the first time someone approaches. He glares at the intruder of his corner, but relaxes when he sees Leon’s friend Cloud standing next to him. At least it’s one of the few people in this room he can actually tolerate._

_“Where’s your light?” the blonde asks him without any preamble._

_“Lost it somewhere around the strip poker table,” Riku takes another drink as Cloud hums thoughtfully. “Lion in the cage again?”_

_Cloud steals a glance to the center of the room where Leon is playing beer pong with his girlfriend Rinoa hanging off his arm, “Yup.”_

_Anyone overhearing them would probably think they were part of the CIA or something, but that’s how it’d always been between them. It was a reluctant friendship built off cryptic conversations in dark corners of parties neither of them wanted to attend._

_“You tell him yet?”_

_“Did you?”_

_“Point.” Cloud sighs and steals the bottle from him for a moment, passing it back with a grimace._

_They stand in silence passing the bottle between them, each watching the person they couldn’t have enjoy the raging atmosphere around them. After the game is done Leon notices Cloud’s absence and signals him over. He takes a final drink hands the bottle back._

_“You should do something before it’s too late. Don’t learn from me,” Cloud leaves without another word._

_Sora bounces around the room from group to group growing increasingly more giggly and friendly with his touches as the night goes on. Riku debates how much longer he’ll let it happen before going to reign him in, as was his purpose for being there. He’s saved from having to move when Sora finally looks in his direction and remembers that he’s there._

_Arms are around his neck before he can blink, and he coughs at the sudden mouthful of brown hair he’d inhaled as Sora threw himself on him. “Riku why are you always in the corner? It’s a party, have some fun.”_

_“I am having fun,” Riku deadpans as he peels his friend off him and sets his empty bottle down. Sora giggles and sways on his feet, prompting Riku to wrap an arm around him and lead him over to an empty couch to sit down. “You better slow down a little. Stay here, I’ll get you some water.”_

_Before he can leave Sora grabs his wrist and yanks Riku on top of him, “Noooo, stay with me. Pretty sure all the water in the kitchen is vodka anyway.”_

_Riku laughs and sits down beside him, “That another one of your ‘science facts’?”_

_“Yes! Science fact #3,126: All the water in Leon’s house is actually vodka, don’t trust it. I think maybe he taps into some underground well of alcohol to make it just flow out of the sink. How else can there be so much in one place? I’m so on to him.”_

_“So alcohol comes from the ground now?” Riku laughs and snakes an arm over Sora’s shoulders to pat him on the head, and then conveniently forgets to take it back._

_“Maybe don’ quote me on that.” Sora yawns and turns over to nuzzle into Riku’s chest, “Mmm, I’m gettin’ sleepy.”_

_“You drank too much.”_

_“I know.”_

_Sora nods off for a few minutes and Riku takes the opportunity to pet a hand through his soft brown hair. Normally he didn’t let this happen where other people could see, but he could care about it later. He’s close to drifting off himself when Seifer fucking Almasy picks their little corner of the party to inflict his presence upon._

_Riku fights the urge to growl at him. Seifer is nothing but a bully who takes joy in bringing other people misery. He has no idea why Leon even lets him inside his house, based on how often the two end up screaming at each other, but he’s at every party without fail and is the biggest reason Riku hates coming here._

_“Heh, chicken-wuss tapped out already, huh?” Seifer sneers, gesturing toward Sora._

_“Fuck off Seifer,” he’s too drunk to deal with this right now._

_Seifer taunts him with a laugh, clearly not taking the hint, “Oooo, the attack dog finally speaks. What? Did Sora forget your leash and muzzle at home?”_

_“Don’t you have a playground to terrorize or something? Leave us the fuck alone,” he pokes at Sora’s side, trying to wake him, but he only whines and nuzzles closer, completely oblivious to what’s going on around him._

_“Or what? You’ll pine at me? Seems that’s all you’re good for anyhow.”_

_He is two seconds from throwing Sora off and knocking Seifer’s teeth in. His patience disappeared somewhere in the bottom of a bottle and he is DONE. Obviously not thinking clearly, he scoops Sora into his arms and stands up. Thankfully he only wavers a little and doesn’t send the both of them crashing into the coffee table as he adjusts his grip._

_Sora blinks awake, unconcerned that he’s now in the air and wraps his arms around Riku’s neck on instinct, “Where we goin’?”_

_“Home,” Riku growls and carries him out the door._

_-_

Sora can’t contain his laughter as Riku explains what happened at the party, “Wait, so you seriously fireman carried me out the door because Seifer sat a little too close to you?

Riku might have left some of the conversation details out of his story, but Sora doesn’t need to know any of that information right now. “Yeah I did, and it was really dumb, can we move on?”

-

_Half a block down the road Riku really starts regretting his life choices. His arms are burning with the strain of supporting the weight of a grown man, even one as small as Sora, and his balance is threatening to give out any second. Of all his irrational drunken decisions, storming out of a party carrying his sleeping best friend like a princess has to be the worst._

_There’s no way he can carry him the full way back to his apartment, so he sets Sora down on his feet and holds onto him until he wakes up. He looks around, lost and confused, “Riku, where’d the party go?”_

_“We left,” he says simply, nudging him to walk on his own._

_“Did a drunk person fall on your lap?”_

_“Yeah, you did dummy,” Riku reaches out to ruffle his hair, careful not to knock him off balance._

_“Oh, sorry,” Sora giggles and captures Riku’s arm, throwing it around his shoulders, “ s’okay though cause now I get to be out here with you”_

_Riku hums in confirmation as Sora throws an arm around his waist for balance. They walk like that for three blocks with Sora drunkenly humming and chattering away about anything that passes his mind. Riku has the fleeting thought that he would endure as many terrible parties as Sora wanted as long as they got to walk home like this._

_From his side Sora giggles, “Riku, you’re being mysterious like the dark side of the moon again.”_

_“Is that from Mulan?”_

_“Yup! You remember that cause it’s your song, you’re the manliest man I know,” Sora illustrates his point by poking his bicep and humming the chorus of the song._

_Riku is absolutely not blushing at Sora’s probably unintentional compliment. Nope. No Way, “I remember that because you’ve made me watch it at least fifty times.”_

_“Sing it with me!”_

_“No.”_

_“Come ooon, I know you know all the words.”_

_“I’ve never heard that song before in my life.”_

_The rest of their walk home is spent with Sora half singing, half shouting, the words of the song. Riku, resigned to his fate, chants ‘Be a man’ on cue._

_-_

“Oh my god, you were really plastered weren’t you,” Sora cackles on the couch at their drunken escapades.

“Yes. Don’t ever expect me to do that again.”

-

_They’re both giggling messes before they reach Riku’s apartment building. On the last half block Sora insists that he is no longer capable of walking and makes Riku carry him again, this time climbing on his back like a monkey. He’s never been more thankful to live on the bottom floor._

_He pauses in the living room of the apartment, debating with himself for all of five seconds before deciding that it would be torture to try and get Sora to sleep on the couch in this state and carrying him to the bedroom. He gently dislodges Sora from his back and lays him across the mattress, leaving his legs dangling so he can take off his shoes. After more internal debate he unbuckles his belt and removes his pants as well, very careful not to touch too long or look too hard._

_He tucks him in under the blankets, smoothing his hair back and kissing his forehead as an afterthought, and goes to stumble over to the couch. Then his wrist is caught again._

_“Stay,” Sora whispers._

_Riku knows he shouldn’t. He knows, but he is selfish, weak, and very, very drunk._

_He takes off his own pants and shoes and climbs into the bed with Sora. The mattress is tiny, so they have to lay close together for both of them to even fit. Riku drapes an arm over Sora to avoid it getting crushed between them and tries to ignore the happy noise from Sora’s throat._

_This is comfortable. Comfortable, surreal, and absolutely everything he’s ever wanted, but he still can’t sleep. He waits until Sora’s breathing evens out, having made the decision to sleep on the couch after all, and retracts his arm to scoot back and get off the bed. He doesn’t expect Sora to turn around._

_“Where you going?” he asks sadly. Riku wants to kick himself._

_“Can’t sleep here Sora,” he tries, but he knows he doesn’t sound very convincing._

_“Why not?”_

_He doesn’t know why he says it. It’s by far the stupidest thing to ever come out of his mouth, but it happens anyway, “Because I love you.”_

_“So stay with me.” Sora’s hand strokes his face and Riku is weak, weak, weak, and leans in._

_Their first kiss is everything he ever dreamed about, and it leaves him breathless and desperate for more, so he pulls away. He doesn’t expect Sora to chase his lips, or the tongue that licks into his mouth tasting of bitter candy, but he loves it. The rational part of his brain shuts down completely as Sora kisses him. Next thing he knows, his hand is up Sora’s shirt and he’s rubbing up and down his back, as Sora mouths at his neck and trails his hands over his hips._

_Their remaining clothes get lost to the either of his room, and then he’s rolling on top of Sora to press them intimately together. His brain is fuzzy and full of the sounds of their combined moans as they press, grind, kiss and lick. Everything is so, so good. He brushes the hair back from Sora’s face and tells him he loves him over and over as he moves on top of him with increased speed._

_He doesn’t know how long it lasts, but he nearly cries when it ends and they spill themselves all over each other. When he can move again he crawls over to scoop Sora back into his arms and kisses messily all over his face, making him laugh. They clean themselves with what he’ll recognize tomorrow as Sora’s t-shirt, and settle back down to finally go to sleep._

_Before they drift off, Sora kisses him one final time and whispers, “I love you too.”_

_-_

They’re both silent again for a long time. Sora is struggling to process everything, but the only thought that will stay put long enough to analyze is ‘Riku loves him’. Riku loves him. Riku loves _him_. He wants to stand up and scream it from the top of tallest building he can find. He barely registers when Riku starts talking again he’s so happy, but he forces himself to pay attention and keep his hands to himself for now.

“To answer your question from earlier, I don’t know what I am. I’m not attracted to women, but I’m not attracted to most other men either. There’s only one person on the planet I want to do that stuff with and he happens to be male, so if that makes me gay than I guess I am,” Riku is tired, and his heart hurts from having to finally say everything he’s been keeping to himself for so long.

“Was that your first time?” Sora has to ask.

“No. Sophomore year of college, during exam season, a guy from my Lit. class invited me up to his room to mess around. We were both tired and stressed so I figured ‘what the hell’. It never got very far because I didn’t like it. It didn’t _mean_ anything.”

“Did it mean something this time?”

“Are you serious?” Riku looks at him like he wants to slap him and Sora laughs.

“Maybe I just wanna hear you say it again,” he scoots closer, pressing their legs together.

Riku willingly looks him directly in the eye for the first time that night, “Yes, Sora, it meant something. It meant that I love you. No matter how many Disney songs you pressure me into singing, stupid parties you drag me to, or times you show up at my apartment in the middle night to bully me into talking about feelings; I love you.”

Sora strokes his cheek, sober this time, and Riku is weak, weak, weak and leans in. Their second first kiss is even better than the last because this time, they’ll both remember it.

“I love you too,” Sora whispers.

-

Sora walks in his front door late Sunday night, still in his Tigger onesie, smiling like a buffoon and dancing terribly to his out of tune rendition of _A Whole New World_ . Roxas sits at their kitchen table regarding the display with varying degrees of disgust as he eats a bowl of cereal for dinner.

When Sora finally notices he’s there Roxas raises his eyebrows and deadpans, “I take it things went well?”

Sora gets the biggest, dopiest, grin on his face and sighs, “Riku’s my boyfriend.”

Roxas smirks into his cereal bowl, “Told you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Oh no, a feeling, I have to go make a hot beverage."- Riku, Probably
> 
> Let it be known that as payment for getting their sorry butts together, Kairi dragged both Riku and Sora out for shopping and full-body makeovers, of which she was the executive decision maker, like she'd been dreaming of for years. 
> 
> Thanks to all who stuck with me. I had fun, and I hope you did too.


End file.
